


Let Her Go

by bananasandroses (achuislemochroi)



Series: Whofic [71]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 2X12 (Doomsday), Angst, F/M, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Tenth Doctor Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-22 01:24:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9575681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achuislemochroi/pseuds/bananasandroses
Summary: You’re having to let her go, and it’s killing you.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Set during and post- _Doomsday_ , this examines the Doctor’s motivation for sending Rose into the parallel universe.  The title and the quote at the beginning are from the song _Let Her Go_ by Passenger; italicised dialogue is from the episode.  As always, any characters you recognise here belong to the BBC.

_Well you only need the light when it’s burning low_   
_Only miss the sun when it starts to snow_   
_... And you let her go._

You have to let her go, and it’s killing you.

_‘I’m opening the Void, but only on this side. You’ll be safe on that side.’_

Daleks and Cybermen, two of your oldest and most powerful enemies, both showing up at once is the final straw. This is the umpteenth time you’ve almost killed her, and you can’t tolerate the risk any more. You decide you have to let her go, with her mother and the man who is (but _isn’t_ ) her father, into that father’s parallel universe.

You’ve had little time to think it through, almost no time at all; your head spins with the utter madness of this decision, but you don’t care. You don’t care about much, by this stage, except an overwhelming urge over-ruling everything: to keep _her_ safe from harm.

You’re happy to suffer if it means you could keep her, the woman who once taught you to live and love again, out of mortal danger. Even though you suspect the pain of letting her go ( _letting_? No, there’s no ‘letting’ involved; even that original half-thought-through decision to send her away from you feels, to you, like amputating a part of yourself) will crucify you, you’ll do it.

You have to let her go, and it’s killing you.

_‘I’ve had a life with you for nineteen years. But then I met the Doctor and... all the things I’ve seen him do for me. For you. For all of us. For the whole... stupid planet and every planet out there. He does it alone, mum. But not any more. ’Cause now he’s got me.’_

You’re listening to her telling her mother she’ll stay with you; listening to what’s tantamount to her declaring she _loves_ you, when you’ve known all along what you would do. You hope she’ll forgive you, one day; Chaos knows it’ll take an age before you’ll forgive yourself.

Even as you drop the device around her neck, your mind’s howling at you to stop, to stop being so _stupid_ as to think this will solve anything; but you over-rule yourself and do it, anyway.

For a few blessed minutes, you’re able to think of something else, and come up with some kind of plan – but at the price of having to ignore the persistent screaming in your head. Worse than after Gallifrey, that screaming; something you’d thought impossible.

Then again, after the Time War and all the pain it brought you, you couldn’t believe you’d ever be able to love again. You’d been wrong; Rose showed you that. Your steadfast, loyal, Rose. When you met her, Rose became the one thing keeping you from dying and choosing not to regenerate.

You have to let her go, and it’s killing you.

_‘I made my choice a long time ago, and I’m never gonna leave you.’_

After those few minutes, when you’re just acclimatising to the old-new loneliness, Rose gives you the shock of all your lives by returning. Stubborn, to the core, is Rose; knowing what she’s given up for you makes you love her for it even more. (You remember, even now, the stabs of painful, disbelieving joy swallowing you; how you’d almost believed ‘for ever’.)

There’s little time for you to process what this means, how maybe you won’t have to be _alone_ any more, before you shout at her, almost screaming, about how, once the breach is sealed, she’ll never be able to see her mother again. Why you can’t let yourself wallow in the knowledge she loves you enough to return, why you can't _see_ what it means, you’ll never know. Your self-hatred blinds you to so _much_.

And you don’t appreciate the universe’s gift, until it’s too late. ‘I’m never gonna leave you,’ she said; yet you couldn’t let yourself believe it, or in yourself, enough to believe her.


End file.
